Unicorn
Jelly is rather an unusual comic. This can confuse some folks, to
say the least. In order to really understand Unicorn Jelly, you need
to know that the story can be seen in many different ways, all of
which are equally real...just different. These ways of seeing Unicorn
Jelly are called 'Layers', or 'Levels'. Unicorn Jelly is a
many-layered story. The key is to pick one, or more, or even all
the layers that you want to enjoy. Unicorn Jelly is special in that
it can be as deep and complicated as you want it to be, or as simple,
too. Let's take a look at some of the layers, or levels of depth, of
Unicorn Jelly!

RAISIN
LEVEL

Unicorn
Jelly is a sci-fi story! It's about how a bunch of weird people do
some stuff, run from some bad people, and eventually save everyone!
It has really weird creatures, jelly-blob people, and a girl with
pointy crystals sticking out of her head! They even get thrown off
the edge of the world and eat poison and all kinds of things! Oh,
there is this weird blob thing with a horn and a tail, and it thinks
it is a unicorn or something. They run around with swords, but they
have these flying machines too! People are dying all over the place,
and then it gets all sappy for awhile, but then more cool things
happen! It's really weird and stuff!

STRAWBERRY
LEVEL

At
the most basic level, Unicorn Jelly is a suspenseful, and sometimes
exciting science fiction story. Unicorn Jelly is about what would
happen if humans somehow became stranded for millennia in an alien
universe...an entire cosmos other than our own, with physical laws,
life forms, and rules that were totally alien to anything in our own
universe. A place with big triangular plates instead of planets, and
air everywhere instead of the vacuum of space. A universe where
gravity is different, and even light isn't quite the same. In such a
place, life would be a struggle for survival for humans. Unicorn
Jelly is the story of how the humans found a way to live, and how
that way was eventually changed forever, to something better, by a
handful of people.

PLUM
LEVEL

At
the simple level, Unicorn Jelly is the story of how a very few
outcast, insignificant people... including two young girls, a native
Jelly person, and a mutant slime that believes it is a unicorn,
manage to save their entire universe simply by having lived. The main
characters of Unicorn Jelly are all eccentrics..they don't fit in,
they are different, they do not conform...and this fact causes a
chain of events that ultimately transform the entire way of life in
the cosmos they live in. Unicorn Jelly is the story of how simply
being yourself, being an individual, can change the world...even if
you do nothing else to try to change things.

APPLE
LEVEL

At
this level, Unicorn Jelly is the story of how a rigid and corrupt
society can be changed by the unbalancing presence of nonconformists,
and is also a tale of responsibility. The stranded humans of the
alien Tryslmaistan universe long ago made a terrible mistake, which
is leading, inevitably, to the ecological devastation, the very
destruction of the entire universe they now inhabit. Running from
their terrible act, the humans have constructed a terribly
controlled, totalitarian society, designed for only one purpose: the
survival of the human species. This goal is pursued without any
concern for anything beyond it, and in the end, the plan will fail.
The heroes of Unicorn Jelly are all mutants, eccentrics, outcasts and
individualists. Uni, the mutant native slime that starts the whole
saga, is driven by an impossible ideal of perfect love, as embodied
in the symbol of a unicorn. This ideal inspires a restless and
disenfranchised young girl, Lupiko, to adopt a freakishly hybridized
little girl, Chou, as her daughter. Chou, changed forever by being
infected and altered by alien material, turns out to be
superintelligent and almost devoid of emotion. Lacking feelings, Chou
could be the greatest danger, or the greatest benefit, ever known to
the humans of Tryslmaistan. Because she is raised by Lupiko, and
taught the value of love and compassion, her abilities are directed
towards a positive direction. In the act of simply trying to survive
in a rigid and narrow culture, the little family inadvertently ends
up disrupting that society, which in turn leads to a chain of events
that will lead to saving the universe as a whole. Unicorn Jelly can
be said to be about how even the most insignificant people can
sometimes change the world, and how every life is important in the
scheme of things. Above all, Unicorn Jelly suggests that we are
responsible for our actions in the world, and for the world we help
to create.

GRAPEFRUIT
LEVEL

An
advanced appreciation of Unicorn Jelly takes all the other levels
into consideration, and adds to it an understanding that the story
also explores the nature of how humans understand the world. Unicorn
Jelly uses a metaphor-laced saga of adventure to explore how people
construct reality...either as a collection of facts, or as a body of
arbitrary beliefs, and how each way of seeing the world has specific
uses and failings. Unicorn Jelly is a subversive work, in that it
suggests that in order to avert catastrophe, the individual must
define themselves independently, developing a unique and constantly
growing identity and morality, flexible enough to adapt to change,
but steadfast enough to make for reliable and trustworthy social
interaction. Unicorn Jelly denounces the commonality of the
rote-learning method of ethical development, as well as any act of
accepting any one worldview as Absolute. Against the backdrop of a
dying universe, a rigid and self-serving society, and the plight of
the death of all living things, a handful of individualists and
nonconformists succeed in becoming the salvation of the cosmos; Not
because they intend to do so, or even imagine that they know how
to do so, but instead essentially by merely existing. Unicorn
Jelly promotes the importance of embracing diversity by demonstrating
how the mere presence of eccentricity or difference can act as a
positive, healing, and constructive element in the world.

MELON
LEVEL

Unicorn
Jelly
is
a philosophical science fiction manga strip which tells a metaphoric
and purposeful story with a definitive beginning and ending. It is
published every weekdayat
Midnight.

At
this level, you already 'get' Unicorn Jelly and do not need any
help. Indeed, you are deliberately adding your own layers and levels
of meaning of your own creation, choosing to use Unicorn Jelly as a
toy for the exploration of your own understandings and feelings.

You
may have already invented ten different ways that I could probably
do things better, if only I weren't so pigheaded, and would bother to listen.